Internal documents from Amazon show that the e-commerce giant used its search system and user data to gain an unfair advantage over local sellers in India, as per a new report.

The report from Reuters – based on internal emails, strategies, and other documents – outlines an aggressive plan by Amazon to dominate the platform with its own products. This is combined with the misuse of a technique known as “search seeding” to boost the rankings of select products in search to ensure that company brands like AmazonBasics appeared in the top three or so listings for a category.

The second malpractice is even shadier and involves the company identifying certain products that are popular among customers and copying them. But the copying isn’t limited to the looks alone. Documents pointed that Amazon India employees examined data related to how often customers returned purchases and then based the products off it.

An example of this was allegedly the Solimo brand whose very strategy was to “use information from Amazon.in to develop products and then leverage the Amazon.in platform to market these products to our customers.” Plans to partner with the original manufacturers of selected products directly were also outlined in the documents.

Amazon, which is already under investigation in India for alleged anti-competitive practices, has denied all of the allegations calling them “factually incorrect and unsubstantiated.” Its archrival – Flipkart – is also undergoing similar investigation by regulators. The investigation covers anti-competitive behavior and brands like AmazonBasics.

But this isn’t the first time Amazon has had to face flak, as a Wall Street Journal report from 2020 highlighted a similar case where Amazon employees misused internal sales data to crush local sellers with competing products.

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